The leaf rake is an ancient, relatively simple gardening tool of which there are many varieties with significant differences. Gardeners and landscapers who wish to maintain a well-groomed lawn will regularly cut the grass and will use these standard hand tools to gather loose grass cuttings or clippings, fallen leaves, and other unattached relatively light lawn or yard debris. Although there are alternate and modern solutions to leaf raking and subsequent removal, including leaf blowers, bag-equipped power lawn mowers, or even burning in place, these are usually either noisy, comparatively expensive, unsafe, or environmentally suspect and thus the traditional, though laborious, lawn-raking task is still in wide use.
A typical leaf rake has a straight, cylindrical, elongated, inflexible, either metallic, hard plastic or wooden handle, that is attached to a fan-type rake head usually consisting of a polypropylene or metallic plurality of teeth or tines that are inwardly curved at their edges. Although raking itself can be a difficult task due the upper body strength requirement, after the leaves are raked and gathered into piles, they still require pick up and removal. Conventional leaf rakes are well suited to raking leaves into piles, but they are generally not designed for lifting capabilities. Because of the necessary leverage for picking up and transporting the raked material, this task is usually the most difficult aspect of this largely seasonal activity and generally requires alternating use of separate pick up implements, such as a shovel and yard broom. If the proper tools are unavailable, leaf and debris pick up may involve bending over, kneeling, or stooping, then gathering and pressing the leaves or other raked material with one hand, against the rake head and tines held by the other hand.
Although those skilled in the prior art will be aware of multi-purpose rake combination devices and rake attachments, such as a rake and shovel combination, or an all-in-one pick-up rake that uses two oppositely directed rake heads for grabbing leaves and debris, and facilitating the leaf pick up task, these are generally of cumbersome design, sometimes requiring costly, complex and bulky additions to a conventional rake. In addition, these inventions generally do not fully employ both rake heads during the raking operation. Furthermore, such combination rakes and rake attachments are generally not intended to accommodate complete separation into independent rakes so that two individuals may rake simultaneously and complete the task within a shorter period.
Even though one conceivably can use a pair of unconnected independent rakes for raking and picking up grass, leaves and light debris, the rake combo kit's major advantage is its ability to combine these implements in a simple manner and into an efficient and steadfast tool that will accomplish both tasks while reducing the tedium of both raking and picking up. In addition, with the present invention both rakes are functional during raking—to achieve greater raking efficiency when the two rake heads are aligned with two rows of back-to-back teeth—and of course during leaf pick up.
It is therefore a primary objective of this invention to provide a two-rake attachment device that has advantages not taught by the prior art.
Another principal object of this invention is to supply a dual-purpose rake combo kit for attaching, in a preferred embodiment, two conventional leaf rakes to provide a convenient method for both leaf and debris gathering or raking and then trouble-free pick up of such material, and effortless alternating between these tasks, thereby eliminating the need for additional tools for these separate tasks.